Freaky Friday

I had my share of stuff go wrong today, but it was a good day all in all. I woke up, thinking I really should be a team player and wear the red university t-shirt that other co-workers were wearing today on a busy, busy refunding day. Refunding days, in university parlance, are the days when students can pick up their financial aid checks. They are busy. They involve long lines and lots of tense, anxious people. It's a good day for casual wear, so I dug my poorly fitting t-shirt issued by the health and fitness center as a promo and decided to at least shorten the darn thing so it would at least not hang down past my butt. When you're five-foot-three, making your legs appear even shorter is not a good thing.

So I got up early and decided to cut off the t-shirt and machine hem it. Piece of cake, right? I took my shower and then went to my beautiful sewing machine. But I had pink thread in there and needed red. I found red thread AND a bobbin with red thread (score!) and loaded them. I started to sew. It bound up. I tried again. Knots. Knots. Stuck needle. I cleaned it out. Stuck again. I swore. Cleaned it out again. And again. And again.

Then I realized I had mis-threaded the machine. Once I performed this task correctly, the machine worked beautifully. This was half an hour after I began a task to which I had alloted five minutes. Crap.

I wolfed down my bran muffin while reading the paper standing up and then was off to work. I arrived a bit early because my plan was to leave early today for comp time and get a haircut. I was very busy at work but managed to get done what I needed to get done. I'm sure my desk will be full again on Tuesday when we return because the fax machine was humming and they all had my name on them.

I went to get my haircut and then got me a McLunch. I put a pot of soup on the stove. I worked in my home office for a while, writing checks for both home and R's shop. I had enough time to make it to the bank and post office before R got home. First I went to the bank, and sent R's weekly draw and a check from one of my contract clients through the tube to the teller. I asked for $100 back so I'd have cash on our weekend away.

The teller said, "I'll have to return this one check because it's dated 1/13/2008 and we can only accept checks less than six months old."

"She just gave me that check, so she must have accidentally written 2008 since we just started the new year"

"Well I still can't accept it."

"You've got to be kidding me. We all make that mistake on checks when we start a new year."

"I'm sorry."

"Well go ahead and give me my $100 and give me that check back. But this is a real pain."

"Have a good day."

"(grunt)...."

I drove away, wondering how in the heck I was going to get a hold of her to write me a new check and/or fix this one. Then I decided to cheat which I NEVER EVER do. I corrected the year and then I even faked her initials at the correction. Then I drove to another branch of my bank. On the way there I thought, "What if the teller is wise to me and she called them and they're watching for me to drive right over there?"

So I went to Target to kill some time which would make it easier to lie and say that I went to my client's house and had her fix it. I swear to God I did this. At Target I bought a bag of dark chocolate M&M's. Then I went to the bank. I deposited the check without incident. At least the teller police haven't called me out yet.

When I got home, I dropped the M&M's on the sidewalk. I guess I blew my karma with that little bit of fraud.